Clare Yeakel turned 100 years old on Monday.

She will long be remembered by her sixth-grade students at Manteca’s Sequoia Elementary School as a relaxed teacher with a love for reading that prompted her to provide her young charges with a special bookcase of age appropriate books for outside reading.

Yeakel became a Reading Resource teacher at Sequoia for a short period but soon knew she wanted to get back in the classroom, not realizing just what she was asking.  She was granted her wish but with seventh and eighth grade students who were more of a challenge than her sixth graders had been. She taught for 25 years. 

She was honored at a centennial birthday party Monday at Prestige Senior Living Complex with balloons and flowers marking her special day.  With a chuckle in her tone, she said she is one of the few who can celebrate on two different days: December 16 and 17.  She explained saying her mother claimed she was born on the 16th and her birth certificate reads Dec. 17.

Yeakel’s first teaching job was in her railroad hometown in Pennsylvania at a rural elementary one-room school where she remembers doing the janitorial work as well as teaching all grades.  She said she had to load the stove with coal as well and clean it out at night before going home.

She said she always had a ride to school in someone’s car in the mornings but had to walk the two miles back home – sometimes braving some four feet of snow on the ground. She often asked one of her students if they would ask their dad if she could ride along in his car.

After the one-room school experience for her first year in teaching, she went on to another rural school where she was assigned to fourth, fifth and sixth grades. That school was also in Pennsylvania.  Yeakel came out west first to Stockton and then to Manteca in 1959 and retired 21 years later in 1980.

Her friends at the birthday party credited Yeakel for being a leader at the Prestige complex saying she has a great mind and has been a whiz at Scrabble and other card games they have enjoyed playing with her. 

“She’s our Scrabble champ here,” noted Carol Clark.

 She has a sharp mind and also does yoga and belongs to a book club, she added. She also has a “killer smile” for a woman of her age, another friend noted. 

The principal at Sequoia at the time was the late Bill Johnson who followed Jim Miniaci at the post.   

Brenda Franklin at Tipton’s Stationery and Gifts remembers her days in the sixth grade saying Mrs. Yeakel was an “excellent” English teacher.  Caroline Haug was also a teacher who taught with Clare at Sequoia as were the late Bill Noyes and Marie Nunes. 

Yeakel couldn’t pinpoint a reason for her longevity, saying she had grown up in that Pennsylvania railroad town with the smoke coming from the locomotives and the coal burning stoves that had to have gotten into her lungs.

 “I have a real faith in God – talk things over with Him – and it all works out,” she said.  

She had two sisters who lived long lives: one died at 104 and the other at 95, passing just a month ago back in Pennsylvania, she said, adding it must also be in the genes.

She said she always had a choice of the dinner menu on her birthdays as a girl when still at home. Her dad prided himself in his family garden of rhubarb, beans and corn which made up her plate along with meat and mashed potatoes. 

Sitting at the birthday lunch table was Frances Darling who will turn 100 next year with a similar party being planned.  Yeakel said they both share the same age for two weeks each year.  Darling was the wife of Manteca High band leader Leroy Darling who put on half-time football extravaganzas at the MHS Gus Schmiedt Field. 

The others joining her for the Prestige luncheon were Betty Christy, Joy Gunnerson, Carroll Swinge – who noted her classroom kids were wonderful – Faith Holly, JoAnne Yates, Sandra Sykes, Brenda McElroy, Frances Darling, Carol Swenson, Ruth Zychi and Carol Clark along with caregiver Anita Handley.

Yeakel was one step ahead of the Prestige staff by ordering her own German Chocolate birthday cake from the Savemart Bakery giving the birthday luncheon two cakes to enjoy along with four ice cream varieties from which to choose.

Yeakel shared a story of baking a birthday cake for a family friend years ago that contained cherries, but she had failed to remove the stones from the cherries, learning of her mistake with the first bite – bringing a chuckle from the gathering. 

Of special note by Yeakel and by her friends sitting around the table, was that Jay Holmes and his wife Jeannie Pollard of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church come to their complex every two weeks and conduct a Bible study for them.

She has three grown sons David, John and Tim. Her husband David was employed as a test engineer with PG&E. Their family home on East North Street.  

To contact Glenn Kahl, email gkahl@mantecabulletin.com.